Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

Cylla and I never lay with each other. Never. Had I lain even once with Cylla Titens, I would have forfeited my wife and my honour, in my own mind, forever. I can state with certainty that Luceiia would have forgiven me had I strayed, because she told me so and I know she spoke the truth. But I could never have forgiven myself for such an atrocity.

Cylla Titens was everything I mistrusted and disliked in a woman, all smoothly disguised in the shape of what every normal man admires.

Cylla fascinated me. She was beautiful, with that headlong, dedicated devotion to her own beauty that left no room in her life for anyone or anything else of importance. Her body was her temple, and she worked long and hard to keep it long and hard. Beauty was life's blood to Cylla, and she was entirely taken up with protecting it. She never sat or walked in the sun, because she believed it dried and wrinkled her skin. And there was never any mention of Cylla and children in the same breath. Her self was the only thing she was true to, and she was determinedly dedicated to that.

I knew how faithless Cylla was; I had reason to. And she knew I thought her a shameless wanton. She never made any attempt to qualify the accuracy or the validity of my opinion. She did not feel she needed to. I lusted after her and she encouraged my lust, deliberately baiting the beast in me, drawing it ever closer to the surface with my own tacit consent.

There is a perversity in me that enjoyed the experience thoroughly, tormenting though it was, and the memory of some occasions that we shared can still choke me with desire from time to time, even though almost twenty years have gone by since I last saw her. The woman was temptation personified, and every blandishment she offered contained a challenge, I thought, to my ultimate moral strength. That, at least, is what I used to tell myself. In my arrogance, I deluded myself that I was ultimately invulnerable to her attractions, but there was always the chance that I would succumb.

Our perverse relationship was a secret between the two of us — guilty on my part, blatant and sexually self-stimulating on Cylla's. Between the two of us there were no pretences. Cylla's motivations were hers alone, as was the undeniable satisfaction she derived from the entire situation. My own were equally private. We never discussed them, save in the broadest, coarsest terms, in whatever space of time each particular set of circumstances permitted. We would talk then, mostly in whispers, and Cylla would act — perform, I suppose, would be the most appropriate word. I did nothing on these occasions but look and react in tense self-containment that was sometimes agonizing. We conducted our association with these constraints because they were within my control, and they were within my control because I dictated the opening rules of what was to become an elaborate and long-extended game.

It began when we first met, my first night in the Villa Britannicus, when I had just met and fallen in love with Luceiia. Cylla climbed into my bed that night and woke me from an erotic dream. Had Luceiia not come to my immediate rescue, knowing Cylla and what she was likely to do, I would have had Cylla Titens there and then, uncaring who she was. But nothing happened. Luceiia nipped that blossom before it could even bud, and I did not see Cylla again for almost a year.

When we did meet again, it was at a gathering of friends, a thanksgiving celebration for a full harvest.

Again Cylla let me know, without words, that she considered me a potential and soon-to-be-possessed bed-mate. I avoided her designs on that occasion, and for a long time afterward, by the simple expedient of never permitting myself to be alone with her. And so we continued for another year and more, with the four of us, Luceiia and myself and Cylla and her husband Domitius, whom she called Dom, reunited at least five times at similar gatherings.

Let it be understood here that Cylla Titens was, as I have already said, more than simply attractive. She was wondrous to behold from a distance and she radiated an aura of sexual availability that every man in every gathering was aware of and responded to, with the singular exception of Domitius, her husband.

It was only on closer association with her that her unattractive elements became apparent, and it may be that many of those affected me alone; there were many men who seemed oblivious to her faults, focusing only on the sweet honey distilled between her thighs. She had, for one thing, a discordant voice. As long as she spoke quietly, it was not too difficult to listen to, but when she became animated, Cylla's voice developed a shrillness, a shrewish quality, that was most unpleasant. Unpleasant, too, was her attitude in dealing with or discussing people, events and topics that were not directly concerned with benefit to her. She could be, and was, more often than not, waspish, disparaging, disagreeable and condemnatory on everything she turned her tongue to, whether or not she knew what she was talking about. Cylla invariably declaimed her viewpoints, assuming an authority that was seldom justifiable. In short, her personality was markedly obnoxious, and I preferred to keep my distance from her.

Domitius, on the other hand, was literally besotted with his wife. He worshipped the ground she trod, and his worship could never allow him to consider that she might be less than perfect. He was a devout Christian, absolutely devoid of malice or mistrust, and his charity was endless. He was fully aware of his wife's vanity, her exclusive preoccupation with herself and her appearance and her outrageous expenditures to maintain all of these. None of this perturbed him. He laughed at all of it and considered himself blessed in being able to provide for all of her needs. Fortunately for Cylla, he also accepted as a part of life and happiness that his wife had to spend at least one week out of three taking the waters of the baths at Aquae Sulis. From time to time, to Cylla's great but unspoken annoyance, he would accompany her. Most of the time, however, Domitius was content to remain at home, running his estates, pursuing his own particular pastimes and leaving his beloved wife to her own reasonably discreet pleasures.

It was in the springtime of my third year at the Villa Britannicus, when we were taking the first cautious, exploratory steps towards establishing our Colony, that Domitius Titens visited my forge one day and became enthusiastically caught up in what I was doing.

He came by, originally, to discuss some family matter with Caius, and visited me in my smithy purely out of courtesy, to pass the time of day. He asked me what I was working on and I showed him, and then he asked more and more questions, showing genuine interest. I responded with enthusiasm, as any craftsman will, and the unforeseen result was that I acquired, in the space of one brief afternoon, a wealthy, dedicated apprentice who laughed at the soot on his snowy robes.

I have often wondered since how things would have differed in our Colony had I merely responded pleasantly that day and pleaded pressure of work to avoid his questions and be rid of him. But of course, recrimination is fruitless.

In any event, Dom had his own smithy set up and operating on his villa in a matter of months. It is not important that he never did become a good smith — it was strictly a pastime for him; what is important is that he gained years of great pleasure from the craft, he and I became close friends, and I started to spend time at his home, thereby falling into the bizarre, grotesque pattern of activities that was Cylla's game.

I think of it always as Cylla's game, even though I was as active a player as she in many respects. I can recollect with accuracy how the overt moves of the game developed, but the preliminary manoeuvres, and the evaluations that accompanied them, were Cylla's alone; I was totally unaware of them. From the outset, long before I knew there was a game, I was adamant that Cylla would never isolate me; there would always be someone nearby, someone within hearing distance. Cylla accepted this basic rule very quickly, and accepted also the corollary that I had not yet recognized: that no matter who might be around us, there would always be intervals, no matter how brief, when she and I would be together unobserved. It was on that acceptance that she built her strategy, and on that premise she moved her pieces with mounting authority, learning quickly what I would tolerate from her and what I would not. As things transpired, there was nothing, under the strict rules of the game, that I would not tolerate.